MediaTek contracts TSMC to manufacture its upcoming Helio P23 chips and has to pay the foundry more than US$3,500 for the cost of 16nm per wafer, the sources said.

MediaTek originally wanted the Helio P23 to sell for $15. However, the prices have recently been cut to $11-12 as the outfit vied for Chinese clients.

The Helio P23 series will appear in the fourth quarter of 2017, with target shipments for the chips of 5-6 million units monthly. The upcoming Helio P23 chips have obtained orders from Oppo, Vivo, Gionee and Meizu, the sources said.

MediaTek expects fierce price competition in the smartphone-SoC market particularly the mid-range segment in the second half of 2017. This means that it will not see any substantial improvement in gross margin in the rest of 2017.

MediaTek saw its gross margin grow to 35 per cent in the second quarter of 2017 from 33.5 percent in the first quarter. However, the gross margin slid from 35.2 percent during the same period in 2016.

The woman who was supposed to be behind Intel’s mobile chip boost has given up on the job after only a year.

Aicha Evans had been working for Intel for a decade, but the last year as the head of the semiconductor maker’s struggling mobile phone division resulted in her handing in her notice.

Chipzilla has spent billions trying to get into phones and ended 2015 with a fairly sad one percent. However the exit happened when it seemed that Intel was going to get a deal supplying Apple with modems. While the deal was off the table for the latest iPhone5S rebadge – the iPhone SE, there are rumours that Intel will be inside the iPhone 7 later this year.

In February, Evans represented Intel at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona where she outlined plans to make the company’s technology central to upcoming fifth generation, or 5G, phone networks and devices. She was promoted to head of the division, and to Intel’s management committee, last year when the company announced its previous mobile leaders Hermann Eul and Mike Bell would be leaving after a transition period.

Samsung is starting a big year. The company wants to dominate the Android market with its Samsung Galaxy S7 and 67 other phones from its portfolio and wants to challenge Qualcomm and MediaTek in the wearable market.

The South Korean manufacturer has just introduced a chip that it calls Samsung Bio-Processor but you can see on the markings on the SoC the S3FBP5A branding. This SoC is meant for health based wearables, most likely on fitness armbands. The most famous one is the Fitbit.

Ben K. Hur, Vice President of marketing, System LSI business at Samsung Electronics said:

“With improvements in smart, fitness devices and an increase in consumer health consciousness, more and more people are looking for ways to monitor various personal bio-data, or fitness data, to constantly manage their health”

@Samsung’s Bio-Processor, which can process five different biometric signals, is the most versatile health and fitness monitoring chip available on the market today and is expected to open up many new health-based service options for our customers.”

Samsung claims that this SoC is the industry’s first all-in-one health solution SoC. The SoC integrates Analog Front Ends (AFE), microcontroller unit (MCU), power management integrated circuit (PMIC), digital signal processor (DSP), and eFlash memory. This should all help to process the bio-signals it measures without the need of external processing parts.

This should interesting for fitness freaks and for people who need to know who many steps they made, how many miles they run, or how many times they turned during the night.Samsung promises extremely small fitness and wearable devices they should ship in the first half of 2016. Samsung got our attention.

What will Intel do?The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn that Qualcomm may be gearing up to buy a large slice of AMD.

Qualcomm has the cash to buy AMD for $3 billion so that would not be a problem. Qualcomm could just buy the server sector of AMD giving the outfit a much powerful chip with some amazing graphics. This would fit with Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf's recent statements that it was looking out for was to expand its server business.

However, what might be a problem is Intel might not let Qualcomm use x86 technology, although it is not clear why it wouldn't. Intel has managed to keep anti-trust regulators off its back by letting AMD have x86 and it has not exactly harmed its business. True, having someone like Qualcomm in there might be a bit more of a challenge, but then – why the hell not. It is better than being hounded by regulators.

Well it would shake up the mobile market for one thing. Users will get better graphics on their phones and there would be APUs for integrated graphics.

Part of a fruitful conversation that Fudzilla had with Tim McDonough, Vice President, Marketing at Qualcomm, was Qualcomm´s commitment to Windows RT. Ever since Microsoft announced Windows RT, ARM supporters had high hopes and Windows RT has yet to live up to some.

Tim confirmed Qualcomm´s commitment to Windows RT and future releases, saying "we are here for the long run". He describes the partnership as the beginning of a long journey and of course Qualcomm is going to continue rolling out chips that will run great with Windows RT.

Qualcomm mentioned that Samsung ATIV and Dell XPS 10, both of which use Qualcomm’s S4 dual-core APQ8060A chips, run really nice. Tim told us that he is a real fan of both devices and that he is currently using one of them.

We also learned that Snapdragon 600, the one used in the HTC One and some versions of Samsung’s Galaxy S4, is 40 per cent faster than the S4 Pro, adding that Adreno 320 graphics core is significantly faster than the Adreno 225 used in the S4 APQ8060A chip. Another number we got is that the Adreno 330 is up to four times faster than the 225, which is a huge leap forward. Let’s not forget that Snapdragon 800, which is up to 75 per cent faster than Snapdragon S4 Pro, is also coming in mid-year, second half of 2013. The 800 will be Qualcomm’s first chip with Adreno 330 graphics.

One can easily conclude that there should be some Snapdragon 600 and 800 Windows RT convertible tablets at some point in the future. To stay on the safe side, Qualcomm just confirmed that new and exciting things are coming in the next months and quarter and they are Windows based.

We have to notice that most people in the tablet world get really excited talking about convertible tablets in all shapes and sizes, as the physical keyboard is definitely an accessory you want to have.

Not only does Qualcomm have Snapdragon 600 chips ready and about to ship, but it is also stepping up its game in entry level and mainstream markets. The company has decided to formally introduce two new chips, detailed a few weeks back.

The Snapdragon 400 series is aimed at mainstream gear. It is powered either by two Krait cores 1.7GHz featuring Asynchronous Symmetric Multiprocessing (aSMP) or four Cortex A7 cores running at 1.4GHz. The A7 version is probably a bit more efficient as well.

The graphics of choice is Adreno 305, but not too much has been revealed about this graphics core. Snapdragon 400 is not an LTE chip, but it does play with HSDPA+ at speeds up to 42Mbits that should be sufficient for entry level phones.

The chip supports LPDDR2 or LPDDR3 RAM memory and camera sensors up to 13.5 megapixels, premium audio, and 1080p video capture and playback. The good news for wireless streaming fans, the chip supports Miracast out of the box. Snapdragon 400 processors will find their way inside the following chips 8226, 8626, 8230, 8630, 8930, 8030AB, 8230AB, 8630AB and 8930AB.

The runner up Snapdragon 200 is the real entry level part and it has four A5 cores clocked at up to 1.4GHz. It supports Hexagon™ QDSP5 digital signal processor and comes with Adreno 205 ancient GPU.It can playback HD and support cameras up to 8Mpixels and it supports LDDDR2 memory. It is CDMA multimode or UMTS capable chip, it supports multi sim cards and dual sim stand by as well as high accuracy GPS.

Based on the specs one can clearly notice that this is a chip meant mainly for emerging markets in Asia market, where dual sim phones are a big deal.

These chips will join Qualcomm’s quite strong portfolio of Snapdragon processors that should be dominated by flagship 800 series, that should come in the coming months. The 600 that is powerful and ready right now, while 400 and 200 parts should cover the mainstream and entry level respectively.